Just less than a week from today, Griswold seniors are expected to get their first look at what an expanded senior center could look like.

Proposals are due April 8 from architects seeking to design an addition for the center. The request for proposals went out last week, and three architects attended a walk-through of the center last week with Director Tina Falck.

Falck said Monday she’s excited to see the designs, and more excited about the prospect of an updated center.

Original plans had called for the 28-year-old center to build upward, nearly doubling its size by adding a 3,000 square-foot second floor and elevator for handicapped access. Those plans were scuttled amid a building evaluation that showed the center would have to modify many parts of the plan to meet new building codes.

“It was going to be much more expensive than what we would be able to do,” Falck said. The center’s members weren’t too keen on the idea of a second floor, either, Falck said, and “even if we did put in an elevator, some of them were worried about the stairs, and safety issues.”

The plan now calls for bumping out walls near the entrance and kitchen to add about 800 to 1,000 square feet of additional space without eliminating too much parking, Falck said.

The kitchen is a top priority, as it can no longer accommodate the food and equipment used in meal preparation each day. The center and Thames Valley Council for Community Action, which handles daily meal distribution, each have a commercial refrigerator and freezer in the program room, and the center has repeatedly put off adding a three-bay sink, required for sanitation reasons by the Uncas Health District, for lack of space.

“If we had to put in a three-bay sink now, or even a dishwasher, I don’t know where we would put it,” Falck said.

One of the top concerns from Falck and the center’s members is breaking the center’s large program room into smaller rooms with permanent, soundproof walls rather than the accordion-style partitions currently in place.

“We had a meteorology presentation in here the other day, and it made me think that we could use a meeting room, a place to listen to things like that,” center member Bill Oltmann, of Griswold, said.

When it’s all done, member Rosemarie Fellows said, “they’ll need a lot more parking for all the people who will want to come here.”

Town officials are hoping much, if not all, of the project can be funded by grants. It was a year ago this month that the town received a $343,000 state Small Town Economic Assistance Program grant to get the ball rolling. Town officials are waiting to hear back about a second state grant of $500,000 to fund the project, and Falck said she expects an answer within a few months. The center is also collecting donations to defray costs.